Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Bringing It All Back Home

My god, what happened to February? Did January even happen? And now it's April. I turn around and all of a sudden it's spring break and we're registering for next semester and I go back home in two months. Home... remember home? I thought I remembered home, but now I'm not so sure. Home sure feels like the place that I sleep, where I return to after a trip and where I write these posts. Home is where the heart is, and for sure I will be a leaving a piece of my heart in England.

A long, long time ago, on a lake far, far away... someone told me that my study abroad group would become a kind of family. I didn't believe them. Traditionally I haven't meshed well in big groups and I knew I was taking a gamble - but I lucked out. Seriously this has been the best seven months of my life and it's in no small part due to the people I'm with. There's no way I could have predicted pretty much anything that has happened so far, and I've always had someone to cheer with or complain to. It's pretty great.

At some point in the last month the impermanence of our situation started creeping into our thoughts and conversation. We all know that this nine month experience will end eventually, but it's making me really sad to think about it. This is the way I see it: in a year or two, most of us will be graduating anyway, and then we will all scatter into the great diaspora of life. Why rush it? After we get back, most of us are going back to Duluth, so why shouldn't the friendships we made here survive the trip over the Atlantic? So I keep telling myself, though I know that real life isn't quite so simple.

Above all, I will take this opportunity to enjoy what time and trips I have left. This past weekend we went to York. I suppose it's fitting that I visit the original York before New York, where I someday hope to live (at least for a little while.) It's a testament to how comfortable that I've become with these people that I worked up the courage to make a video featuring people other than myself. The videos are generally a lot of fun to make, and they're a great way to share what I've been doing to my stateside audience. But, of course, my videos serve another purpose: they document my year in a way that text never could. Thanks to this uniquely 21st century technology, I will be able to look back at myself in decades to come and really remember what a great time I had with my friends.